Re: PostgreSQL as a local in-memory cache

On 16/06/10 18:30, jgardner(at)jonathangardner(dot)net wrote:
> On Jun 15, 4:18 pm, j(dot)(dot)(dot)(at)agliodbs(dot)com (Josh Berkus) wrote:
>
>> On 6/15/10 10:37 AM, Chris Browne wrote:
>>
>> I'd like to see some figures about WAL on RAMfs vs. simply turning off
>> fsync and full_page_writes. Per Gavin's tests, PostgreSQL is already
>> close to TokyoCabinet/MongoDB performance just with those turned off; I
>> wonder if actually having the WAL on a memory partition would make any
>> real difference in throughput.
>>
>> I've seen a lot of call for this recently, especially since PostgreSQL
>> seems to be increasingly in use as a reporting server for Hadoop. Might
>> be worth experimenting with just making wal writing a no-op. We'd also
>> want to disable checkpointing, of course.
>>
>>
> My back-of-the-envelope experiment: Inserting single integers into a
> table without indexes using a prepared query via psycopg2.
>
> Python Script:
> import psycopg2
> from time import time
> conn = psycopg2.connect(database='jgardner')
> cursor = conn.cursor()
> cursor.execute("CREATE TABLE test (data int not null)")
> conn.commit()
> cursor.execute("PREPARE ins AS INSERT INTO test VALUES ($1)")
> conn.commit()
> start = time()
> tx = 0
> while time() - start< 1.0:
> cursor.execute("EXECUTE ins(%s)", (tx,));
> conn.commit()
> tx += 1
> print tx
> cursor.execute("DROP TABLE test");
> conn.commit();
>
> Local disk, WAL on same FS:
> * Default config => 90
> * full_page_writes=off => 90
> * synchronous_commit=off => 4,500
> * fsync=off => 5,100
> * fsync=off and synchronous_commit=off => 5,500
> * fsync=off and full_page_writes=off => 5,150
> * fsync=off, synchronous_commit=off and full_page_writes=off => 5,500
>
> tmpfs, WAL on same tmpfs:
> * Default config: 5,200
> * full_page_writes=off => 5,200
> * fsync=off => 5,250
> * synchronous_commit=off => 5,200
> * fsync=off and synchronous_commit=off => 5,450
> * fsync=off and full_page_writes=off => 5,250
> * fsync=off, synchronous_commit=off and full_page_writes=off => 5,500
>
> NOTE: If I do one giant commit instead of lots of littler ones, I get
> much better speeds for the slower cases, but I never exceed 5,500
> which appears to be some kind of wall I can't break through.
>
> If there's anything else I should tinker with, I'm all ears.
>
>

Seeing some profiler output (e.g oprofile) for the fastest case (and
maybe 'em all later) might be informative about what limit is being hit
here.

regards

Mark